Just a business travel agent working for a big corporation. His company is not interested in the independent business traveller... he is!

26.1.06

work: Travel Agents mistake too

I cost my company €124 today.

The problem of us travel agents is that if we get things wrong, it can be really difficult, or impossible, to get them right again.

A client called me today. He had a ticket from BLQ (Bologna) to PEK (Beijing) connecting in FCO (Rome) with AZ on the domestic rounte and CA (Air China) on the intercontinental sectors.

The problem was that I had spellet his first name wrongly. A C insted of a G. Usually as long as it’s not your surname it’s no problem, you just need to give indication on it in the reservation. But he wanted a new ticket.

It is not possible to change the name of a reservation, if you do so, the system cancels all reserved flight automatically. So I rebooked all segments, but made a mistake and booked the wrong segment from BLQ to FCO, the 06.55 instead of the 14.25. I only noticed after having cancelled his old reservation. Damn, the 14.25 was fully booked except for the full fare. The Air China fare of €980 allowed to add domestic routes with AZ only in a very low economy class, but with the class I had available the cost would rise to €3200.

So I had to issue a ticket going FCO–PEK–FCO–BLQ for €940 and a separate BLQ–FCO for €164.00.

I had sent the ticket to his secretary 6 days before, either she or him could have had a look at it before couldn’t they?Damn, sometimes I really hate this job.

One piece of advice to all of you. Always check whatever your travel agent sends you. And check your travel tickets and documents. We are human and it’s always best to prevent mistakes like these.